Zebu Grill-Causal Authentic Brazilian
305 East 92nd Street
Saturday, January 28th
6:45 pm optional drinks; 7:30pm dinner
$69 3-course meal, glass of wine, tax & tip
When Tania Santana and her brother Paulo Oliveira opened the hot Brazilian restaurant Circus over ten years ago, they gave the lower-Sixties stretch of Lexington Avenue a transfusion of Brazilian cuisine and potent caipirinhas. But when the ground floor of the old Peter Kump cooking school three blocks from Santana’s Yorkville apartment became available, she jumped at the chance to colonize her own neighborhood with the more casual, Zebú Grill. Named for a Brazilian breed of humped cattle and outfitted with rustic wood tables, the charming restaurant offers us a menu of authentic Brazilian food within an eclectic, yet cozy dining room. Its walls alternate between sepia photo collages contrast rustic exposed brick. Floating wine racks sit above the bar, and wrought-iron chandeliers hang from the ceiling, which proudly displays the flag of Brazil. It’s a quintessentially New York eatery, and the food is no less eye-catching. Plates of golden-brown empanadas sit beside moranga’s acorn-squash bowls, and Brazil’s national dish, feijoada. To cap off meals the creamy flan, which Zebu boasts is the best on the planet.